Could this be goodbye? Credit: MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
When you are in real trouble, deep trouble — job on the line, family restless, dog embarrassed to be seen with you in the park trouble — what do you do?
If you are President Trump (dogless but otherwise conforming to that description) it is simple. As Frank Bruni of the New York Times puts it, you “set yourself on fire”.
“His gratuitously touted instincts are nowhere to be found,” Bruni writes, instead they’ve been “supplanted by self-defeating provocations, kamikaze tantrums and an itchy Twitter finger”.
If it’s possible to have a kamikaze tantrum while digging yourself further into a hole then Donald Trump is doing it.
This all-systems meltdown indicates to Bruni and the Democrats that they’ve never had it so good. Not since Clinton Dole in 1996, has the electoral map looked so propitious. Yes, yes: events and all that, but this looks, four months out, like a slam dunk.
Biden by a landslide in November.
Democrats believe it. Many Republicans believe it. The doyen of the Republican smart set, the Wall St Journal columnist and former Reagan speech writer, Peggy Noonan, summed it up in two short, much retweeted sentences:
“He doesn’t understand his own base. I’ve never seen that in national politics.”
Her point was that plenty of Trump voters — perhaps half of them — now actively dislike him and his antics. They wanted the second act of his presidency to be more serious, in particular to be about securing the supreme court for conservative values.
Instead they get a never-ending maelstrom. And a court that has just over-turned Louisiana’s effective ban on abortions. Even after two much touted Trump Supreme Court appointments the big victories — the really serious conservative wins that secure the ascendency of the cultural traditions of (white) rural American for decades — are not happening.
The conclusion reached by all these disparate folk, from liberal Democrats, through ‘never Trump’ Republicans, into the base itself, is that Donald Trump is going to fight a dirty election, perhaps even contest the result, but eventually lose and lose big.
They should know — we all should know — that with Donald Trump there will be twists like you’ve never seen before! Made for TV events that boggle the mind! The promise of a totally new series! Folks, it is going to be way messier than just an election lost. But the wiser Democrats, along with some nervous Republicans, are preparing themselves for the messiest outcome of all.
Donald Trump resigns.
He throws in the towel. All of this flailing about has a direction: the direction water has when a sink-hole empties.
The really interesting thing is that the biggest fans of Trump quitting the scene are some of the more serious supporters of the Donald, or what they thought he stood for. The well-informed Trump-voting blogger Mickey Klaus — the man who first revealed that saintly Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards was a scoundrel cheating on his wife — has suggested a plan that may well have legs.
It goes like this. In a reference to a famous article written at the time of the last presidential election, Klaus poses the question ” “What happens if it’s a ‘Flight 93 Election’ and your side is corkscrewing down into the earth?
“…It is time to bail.”
With Donald Trump out of the race he paints a picture of a situation in which passengers rush at the cockpit, and (here the Flight 93 analogy rather fails, but stick with it) eject Trump, thus transforming the election entirely in favour of the Republican party. With Trump gone, the intensity level of the Dem campaign will instantly drop. Millions who might turn out to get rid of Trump will stay at home. The lightning rod having wandered off with all the electricity, everything will probably become very boring very quickly. The Democrats’ nominee is so weak that Republicans, depending on whom they picked, might still have a chance at retaining the White House.
There are of course plenty of Republicans who have wanted Trump to go during the course of his presidency. But I cannot stress enough that Kraus and those who agree with him are not ‘never Trumper’ Republicans opposed to the President and seeking now to bring the party back into the mainstream.
They are the opposite. They want to secure Trumpism, which they see as an aggressively pro-immigration restrictions, pro-American jobs, anti-China and anti-foreign entanglements agenda. Proper populism. And they fear (rightly probably) that a big defeat will lead to a situation where Mr Trump booby traps the White House and jets off into the sunset and the Republican party clears its throat and moves on, moves Left.
How do they stop this? They act NOW. Perhaps with Mike Pence, the vice president or perhaps with some other character sprung from a TV studio in time for the party Convention at the end of August. There is already a name in the frame: step forward Tucker Carlson, the host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Fox News (of course).
Mr Carlson has veered in recent months into a fascinating area of political space: attacking Donald Trump from the populist Right. Specifically, he called out the White House for failing to clamp down more vigorously (with troops perhaps?) on the Black Lives Matter protests and the riots in some cities.
There’s even gossip — via the Politico website — that Carlson is pally with a man who has the ear of the President but a scratchy relationship with his advisors: “Carlson has established a friendship,” Politico says, “ with Donald Trump, Jr., according to a source familiar with their relationship.”
Whoever it is, the first item on their agenda is a no-brainer. They must find a way to pardon Trump senior or make it plain that they will. As Robert Kuttner of Brandeis University put it recently: “Mar-a-Lago isn’t Elba, much less Saint Helena, but it sure beats the Oval Office.” In other words this Napoleon needs an exile plan. He needs his lawyers to buy into these arrangements in order that he can be sure of living out his days in relative freedom.
That is not as easy to sort out as it might seem because the US federal system makes it nigh on impossible to stop individual states prosecuting crimes they believe were committed on their territory. Vice president Spiro Agnew is a case in point: when he was forced out of office in 1973 and did a deal in lieu of prison it was all sorted out with the federal authorities because his offences were federal not state crimes. Donald Trump has New York to contend with: property deals, loans, tax issues.
Worse: quite a few of the things he might need sorting date from before he was President, so his people cannot even be sure of a presidential get-out clause in an off-to-Elba scenario.
Hang on though, is this really a serious scenario? One Senior correspondent on Fox News, Charles Gasparino, claims to have talked to people who think it may be: “Over the weekend I spoke to a sample of major players; one described Trumps current psyche as “fragile”. Gasparino tweeted a few days ago. “I’ve heard the talk but I doubt it’s true,” another said. “My bet is, he drops if he believes there’s no way to win.”
There is still a way to win. There are new Trump voters to be found among the huge numbers of Americans who do not vote. It is possible, too, that ‘shy Trump support’ — un-noticed by the opinion pollsters — is a thing. And, of course, Joe Biden is no superman. But these are febrile times.
And in the modern world political movements gather pace fast. Mickey Klaus makes a telling point:
“I admit,” he says, “ I also called in Newsweek for Michael Dukakis to drop out in 1988, long after the convention, on the grounds that he was losing and his running mate, Lloyd Bentsen, would do better.
“Was I wrong?”
He was not wrong. Dukakis went down to historic defeat to George W Bush. Bentsen could have won. This is why the ‘will Trump resign’ question is more than a gossip line for bored political nerds: it is plainly possible, but with what impact? If he walks he throws the nation into a new and even more unpredicatable tumult.
He might like the sound of that.
Justin Webb presents the Americast podcast and Today on Radio Four. His Panorama documentary “Trump the Sequel”, is available now on Iplayer
JustinOnWeb 
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SubscribeThis is now getting ridiculous. A couple of days ago we had an article about Trump not giving up the Presidency if he lost now we have one about him dropping out before the election. Scaremongering, wishful thinking, anti Trump rhetoric call it what you will, it’s 2nd rate journalism and not befitting UnHerd. I’ve no particular opinion on Trump worth sharing right now but I have plenty on these embarrassing excuses for journalism. We’ve heard it all before with his election win (all polls against him, no chance of winning, the worst defeat ever, Hilary a shoo in), Brexit (the British people will never vote to leave EU, etc), the recent UK General Election (the people love Jeremy, maybe I’m exaggerating that one). I turn to UnHeard for stimulating, thought provoking reading not the safe, same old stuff regurgitated from any number of other media, New York Times, Washington Post, Times etc. Those voices are not UnHerd in any way – boring, conformist, group think. Come on UnHerd be different. Tell us something genuinely new not just more wishful, poor quality, pack mentality journalism.
You turn to UnHerd for your own brand of conservative groupthink and are sad this article does not provide it.
Scaremongering worked well for the establishmeny when their COVID19 hoax trick us into meekly surrendering many of our rights and liberties. Why wouldn’t they try it again with the election, scaring voters away from Trump with the intent of persuading him to drop out so machine politician Pence can step in? Just a thought.
Sounds like wishful thinking by an author known for his impartiality in matters Trumpian.
‘ Her point was that plenty of Trump voters ” perhaps half of them ” now actively dislike him and his antics.’
Would this be the same ‘perhaps half of them’ who were deplorables?
How did that previous out of thin air estimation, work out?
Evidence light.
I’m guessing your use of the word ‘impartiality’ was ironic…
The BBC author, who’s name I will not speak, is about as partisan as they come, from a deeply partisan organisation.
Justin Webb: Radio 4’s Today programme and previously BBC’s North America Editor. What worse qualification could you have to comment upon American politics? Tainted to the core – why else would the BBC have employed him? Just cut and paste Democrat talking points.
Why would Trump need lawyers? What has he done in office that was anywhere near as illegal and/or insane as the invasions and misadventures perpetrated by his predecessors in relation to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen and various other places.
Tucker Carlson is an interesting option, but surely highly unlikely at this point. That said, his news/comment show is breaking all records for cable news.
Fraser, the key phrase in the article is “Worse: quite a few of the things he might need sorting date from before he was President,”
Surely the point being made, is that Trump is scared of prosecution for things done before he became President, and that is all that’s keeping him in the race, and also driving him mad. That he’s breached the wall, but someone as committed, but better qualified, is now needed to rebuild the city on the hill.
I still don’t understand what the ‘things’ are that need sorting from before his Presidency -is this a reference to his tax affairs?
This feels very “what if”. But then “what if” Biden is diagnosed with Alzheimer …
The problem with “what if” is you can run it endlessly and the media did that in 2016, they just failed to run one option, “what if Clinton is unelectable”. The problem is most in the media have not asked the same question of Biden, so here goes “What if Biden is unelectable?” – Justin, that is the heading of your next column if you choose to take up the challenge!
In 2016 Trump was only going to win against one candidate, Clinton. My guess is when they hit the campaign trail together Biden will walk into the same issues Clinton had and lots of people will find it difficult to vote for him. Does that mean Trump will win? No, it’s still a race! What it does mean is that Trump is not the lost cause many in our media think he is!
The difference is that Biden is simply not as hated as Clinton was. In 2016, millions who would normally vote Democrat without even thinking just could not bring themselves to vote for her. This doesn’t apply to Biden, appalling though he is on almost every measure.
The problem for Biden would be the upcoming debates. The contrast would be so terribly stark, that it is difficult to see how a majority of voters could be enthusiastic enough about him to go out into the chill and rain and vote his ticket.
Of course, mail-in voting, where perhaps millions of stolen or counterfeit ballots would be added to the system could assure him a landslide. That is what ballot-harvesting is all about and why the Democrats are so enthusiastic about it. A total loss of confidence in the sanctity of the ballot, which this will foster, will lead very rapidly to the collapse of the US. Which is the whole point, anyway.
Again with the postal vote is corrupting BS?
And the democrats want to bring down the USA?
Nonsense squared
Yes -the Biden team are apparently already trying to impose conditions on the debates -a ‘live’ reality check team being one of them; his camp is already sounding pretty weak.
Yes, but he carries a lot of baggage from recent comments that were racist to plagiarising Neil Kinnock’s speech. Then there are some worrying health issues.
Bidden isn’t as hated but he may be as unelectable!
How very BBC. But of course, any BBC personnel voicing a pro-Trump opinion, or at least not skewing facts to suit an anti-anyone-on-the-right stance would be ‘disappeared.’ How very unprofessional.
I think this is much better analysis of the current situation (ignoring the TDS sections):
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Ah so! A knothead-nattering-nabob-of-nothingism writes another anti-Trump screed. I wonder, when Trump wins again in November if this knot head-nattering-nabob-of-nothingism’s head will implode. UNHERD! Tsk, Tsk, Tsk on you.
I don’t really understand this whole knee jerk anti BBC reaction to the article. Is this an Unherd thing? I read it as Webb proposing a scenario for the establishment of the hegemony of the republican right in the US. I thought it was quite an impartial piece of journalism. But what would I know? I’m a bit to the left of Genghis Khan.
I’ve read quite a number of articles on UnHerd which I have disagreed with, but this is the first which is pure comedy.
Webb has obviously no idea of the drug of power or of the notion that a week is a long time in politics.
This article carries the sort of ‘BBC fake news’ sentiment that we’ve repeatedly come to expect from the cultural Marxist media, and resulted in their previous poll meltdowns – not least of which over Brexit, UK 2019 and 2016 US elections. It’s utter, nonsensical rubbish.
There’s no evidence cited for Trumps plans, in fact anyone with half a brain knows that he’s a fighter who’ll see it through, and who won’t give up on the US working (or currently non-working) man.
If history tells us anything, it’s that Trump will likely win by a landslide – Nixon in ’68, post riots.
The non-socialist american masses want law and order, and economic recovery, both Trump strengths, not victimhood, cancel culture, defunding and a president who’s losing his marbles.
And they’ll shortly find out how badly served Trump has been by Democrat led deep-state conspiracies that have deliberately bedevilled his presidency. Role on the Durham/DoJ investigation report…
Let me get this correct – right leaning voters who want a more conservative form of government, will vote for Biden to get it??!
The USA has stark choices to make – get the popcorn in.
Plenty of conservative white and black Americans support Trump because he is a doer and a patriot (the Democrats are talkers and unpatriotic). Having said that, I would not be surprised if Trump called it a day, given all the bile directed at him at home and abroad: the wretched discourtesy of Webb and his BBC colleagues in this country never ceases. Why Webb should appear on UnHerd I can’t think – we hear too much of him on radio 4. As a political outsider, Trump has achieved quite a lot and deserves a second term. He is certainly of sounder mind than Biden but neither of them is getting any younger and surely the USA must promote some younger politicians.
One has to wonder whether we need an Opinion piece from a BBC journalist, whose opinion is already well known and is as clearly anti-Trump as it is possible to get – no surprises there.
Would calling it just another BBC anti-Trump ‘hit-piece’ have been more accurate?
Good point. BBC opinion is hardly ‘UnHerd’. It is blasted at us 24/7 over countless channels.
Trump’s Mt. Rushmore speech was a very welcome reset, and hopefully he leans into it.
The article provides no plausible reason for a last minute resignation. Trump’s behind Biden in the polls but wasn’t he also behind Hillary :
https://www.bbc.com/news/el…
Justin Webb’s scenario seems far-out to me, but I don’t claim any expertise in political strategy.
I am an economist though, and find it strange that two days after the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) came into effect, he wouldn’t be writing about Trump’s huge triumph on this issue. July 1 was also the day that Ian Brodie, the Chief of Staff in Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office was forced to resign. Harper made him quit because he had leaked classified information that came from the Canadian consulate in Chicago, suggesting that the Democrats weren’t serious when they threatened to renegotiate NAFTA or cancel it. The Canadian reporters thought it related to Clinton. It actually related to Obama and may well have cost him the Ohio primary. Harper actually did damage control by making a speech saying stories published on Obama and NAFTA were “blatantly unfair”, although as it turned out, they weren’t. President Hopey-Changey, once in office, did nothing to renegotiate NAFTA, and neither did his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. They were both, in the final analysis, slippery, cynical, duplicitous pols. By contrast, when Trump said he would either renegotiate NAFTA or tear it up, he meant it, and it was precisely because his Canadian and Mexican counterparts knew that he meant it that he succeeded in renegotiating NAFTA.
The provisions in the new treaty aimed at preventing currency wars among the North American partners are unique to USMCA, although the Obama regime wanted to put something similar in the TPP. While they do interfere with national sovereignty over monetary policy, they may well have promise in protecting countries against unhinged behaviour by their own central banks. Trump or Biden may well want to stick similar provisions in a US-UK Trade Agreement, and it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing for the UK.
Does Justin desperately want Trump out of office? Is this why two days after such a huge triumph for Trump, all he can write about is how Trump might make his exit?
F89k that….if Trump tries to tell the UK how to run its own currency, he (like the EU) must be f78ked off at the highport.
Why do so many globalists want to sell out the UK to the US?
Justin Webb is employed by the BBC. That should tell us all we need to know about him and his politics. This article is nothing but wishful thinking on his behalf.
Justin Webb should keeps his wet dreams to himself.
Like Noonan and others in the Northeast media enclave, Webb doesn’t understand the political dynamics in the totality of the U.S. Trump will fight – and he will fight to WIN. Unlike the preening ‘elites’ that Noonan and Webb hobnob with, I am not willing to predict the outcome of the electoral process. (I will concede that an electorate capable of twice electing Obama is also capable of electing a mentally impaired man with a lifelong record of corruption.) But the election will be FOUGHT; it will not simply be relinquished. I agree with Bill McCardle and other who have commented: Webb is being ridiculous.
I’ve always felt the Trump was the wrong President elected for the right reasons.
Trump lacks the political acumen required of the office, whilst at the same time having the genuine ability to identify and articulate the issues which affect millions of Americans but have been ignored for the last quarter of a century.
If popularism is to capitalise on the gains it has made, perhaps it would do so better without Trump?
Populism means giving emotionally satisfying simple (wrong) answers to hard questions… in order that the not-too-smart vote for populist manipulators who have hidden agendas. The problem with Trump is he never had any agenda beyond ‘look at me, I’m so so great.’
Heaven forbid that we replace Trump with an intelligent, devious, populist.
I tend to agree. His off road speeches used to surprise and (somewhat) inspire, but lately his ramblings have felt helter skelter and failed to seize the political moment. His Rushmore speech was much better -he faithfully followed the autocue all the way through. I wonder if he is losing his appetite for the game. These protests should really have been open goals for the Republicans, law and order, due process etc… but they’ve made a bit of a hash of things overall. I wonder if there is not a smart strategy to give the Democrats enough rope with which to hang themselves -risky though, and he’s going to have to step up to the mark and deliver some big hits if he’s going to win in November.
I normally ignore typos, but Mickey Kaus’s last name was spelled two different ways in this article; neither was correct. Dukakis also lost to George H.W. Bush, not George W. Bush.
The NYT? really!
No
When Trump arrived in DC he didn’t realize what he’d won and he didn’t have a clue how Washington works. A President has over 4,000 appointments at his fingertips that reach 4 levels of management down into every structure of every agency. That said – it wasn’t until January of this year that his National Security advisor announced he was “cleaning out the Obama appointees” still on staff and last October, he got upset by a US Attorney from California – a woman Obama appointed, he’d never bothered to fire some 3.5 years into his tenure. Even the vilified Obama IRSCommissioner remained in office for 10 months before the man retired voluntarily. It is worth recalling that the “Drain the Swamp”campaign tag line never came from the Trump campaign – it was on a homemade poster at a rally. The entire Russian charade was orchestrated by Obama people who Trump and his idiot AG – Jeff Sessions left in office during the opening 90 days of his administration. Trump meant well from the beginning, but I think he has realized that he is incapable of changing those operatives controlling the levers of US Government, because he has only now discovered who they really are.
It’s not clear what crimes Trump is supposed to have committed in this fantasy article. However, it is clear that the Durham probe is quite likely about to prosecute many high level Obama officials. One of the few reliable pollsters (with a track record going back decades) who correctly predicted 2016 gives Trump a 91% chance of winning 2020 and stands by that prediction despite the last couple of weeks. I don’t dispute that Trump’s polling is down and some people aren’t happy, but that’s their way of signalling displeasure – it’s a persuasion technique to get the candidate to do more of what you want. They will return to Trump when push comes to shove. Just look at the UK GE if you want evidence of that, the parallels are quite striking. Further, since gun ownership is one of the best predictors of voting intentions (a revealed preference instead of an opinion poll in an impossible polling environment), and gun sales have gone up massively, I think Trump will win unless the Dems steal it with ballot harvesting and mail-in ballots. There is no chance that Trump steps down unless he gets ill, although I do wish he would.
There was absolutely nothing in Trump’s recent Mt Rushmore address to support any of the conjecture in this article. Additionally, watching Tucker Carlson on Fox there is very little there to support the view he is “attacking Donald Trump from the populist Right”. In fact Carlson’s recent opinion piece on Trump’s Rushmore speech was pretty laudatory. Elsewhere Carlson has tended to be more critical of the Republican party as a whole for not standing up more boldly for conservative values in the face of ‘cancel culture’. Where critical of Trump it has been for him not being sufficiently Trumpist.
The polls don’t look good for Trump -but neither did they on the last occasion, which makes the result harder to call. I would imagine though that as we get closer to polling there are likely to be some pretty tasty adverts on how Democrat run cities have been burning, their citizens murdered in the hundreds, whilst their mayors call for defunding of the police and defer to the mob.
Another article written from the depths of BBC group think. How many 2016 Trump voters switch after seeing the recent anarchy unleashed from the foundations of an ideologically driven democratic party. Trump and Biden are straw men in the culture wars and I believe the silent majority will be heard once more.
Trump isn’t going to quit….
If you are going to hang a bit of idle and biased speculation on what some alleged Trump supporter says then for God’s sake get his name right.(Hint: it’s not Mickey Klaus) Otherwise it looks as though you cranked out some piece of risible bullshit while waiting for your Uber to turn up.
This is just pure bollocks. I suppose it’s possible that President Trump will resign or decline to stand again. I should say that it is very unlikely. And if it comes to pass, so what? It certainly won’t be a positive for ending mass immigration, which is the principal issue upon which Trump campaigned and upon which he was elected. It’s obvious that he’s done very little about it. It appears that he really didn’t care all that much about it. But if he didn’t do it, it won’t get done. No one in the Republican party will do it. They’re all full-bore globalist. Not that it’s likely, given the changing demographics and the disinclination of immigration patriots to vote for the Republicans who hate them, that any Republican can be elected president. Either Trump manages to hang on and we get four years to prepare for the dark ages that will be upon us when the Democrats are back in power, or he’ll lose (or resign) and the dark ages will begin in January.
It is refreshing to read intelligent and interesting articles about Trump, especially from a BBC man. Almost restores my faith in Auntie.
Last night I was reminding myself what Obama was like by watching some YouTube vids – the man was different class. I hope Trump doesn’t resign, it would send a good message if he were to lose bigly in October.
Yet Trump pushes to protect the left behind…..
I agree as orators they are different class. Now though when I see Obama I find him a bit oleaginous; almost too good. I think Trump’s public speaking is pretty dreadful unless he is following the autocue. But in the primary and presidential debates in the run up to the last ballot he was pretty extraordinary -he demolished Clinton when she apparently held all of the aces. No one could seem to get to grips with his heavyweight slap downs and direct insults. Not ‘presidential’ but highly effective.